Palermo and the Citrus Kingdom

A narrow alley in Palermo's old quarter. Behind the Baroque facades, the city's hidden courtyards still preserve the imprint of the Arab city built a thousand years ago. Sicily is branded around the world as pure, ancient, and unchanging. But Sicily is not a story of purity. It's a story of invention—and no invention runs deeper than its citrus. Part I of The Citrus Kingdom begins in Palermo, between a Nutella argument with Croatian friends, a taxi feud with a Sicilian grandpa in a blue Škoda, and a bottle of acid-green Cedrata soda on the waterfront. From there the story sails east: how the citron traveled from the monsoon foothills of Asia to the courtyard gardens of Arab Palermo, one gardener, one ship, and one careful cutting at a time—and how a single skinny sapling became the start of a kingdom. Read the full article →